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Saturday, April 14, 2012

Mobile Prayer Station Day 1: Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Today marked Day 1 of the Mobile Prayer Station here in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. My friends Andrew and Taylor joined me today. To catch you up to speed, a few of us from the Bilingual Community Church found a print shop and then designed and ordered some prayer flags. Currently, we are set up in a nearby park by the corner of Heti and Mingren Streets. It's a pretty ideal location because there is a lot of car and scooter (moped) traffic as well as foot traffic. Just down the road is Yucheng Street which has many places to eat and drink, so many people are constantly walking to and fro. 

Since today was the very first day, I did a little teaching on the heart behind street prayer and coaching on some of the ins and outs of street prayer ministry. The reason the Mobile Prayer Station exists is to bless and serve the community. We are on the street in order to release the presence of God and make known His Kingdom to people. This can take differing forms and is not always about forcing Jesus onto people. The reason I say this is that sure, we would love to share Jesus with every single person who comes by (and we do tell people that we are Christians who love Jesus and are here to bless people with prayer), but we are not here force the Gospel on people. Rather, we are here to listen to people's needs, show them the love and compassion of Christ and pray for them. That is our agenda. Now, if there is an opportunity we will talk about Jesus with people, but we allow them to freely choose to ask us about our faith. 

I also shared with them some of the insights the Lord has taught me in terms of street prayer ministry. Oftentimes, the window of opportunity with praying with strangers on the street is anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes. So, I encourage people to be mindful of the time and to remember that because of the prayer flags when people stop they already know what we're about. Also, when we do pray, I remind them that prayer can be a bit awkward and intimidating for anyone (especially for those new to prayer), but add to this that we are praying on the street and in public, well, the awkwardness and nervousness increases tenfold. I reminded them to make sure they prayer for the person's requests and anything else the Holy Spirit might add, but to keep it simple and to the point. Long prayers are for inside the church and not the street. 

As to the day, we spent most of the time praying for the area, praying for God's Kingdom to break in love and in power in both the immediate area and in people's lives. We prayed for one another as well as for people walking by. I've come to realize that there are two kinds of prayer, we can pray for people and with people. Since, no one stopped for prayer, we spent the day praying for people. Something that I enjoy doing is helping cultivate and develop prophetic gifting in people. So, as people walked by I lead Andrew and Taylor in asking God to bring prophetic revelation about people, so that we can pray for them as they walked by. Afterwards, we would share what we each felt the Holy Spirit was saying and in a sense compared notes and then prayed what we heard. It was neat to see some similarities in revelation which is always encouraging. Today, was only day 1, I am envisioning many more days ahead, but am definitely glad that the Mobile Prayer Station has begun here in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Please pray for Divine appointments and favor both with God and people.